Progressive Political News

As state courts continue to hear cases related to abortion bans and protections across the country, following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, these institutions have come even more into the crosshairs of a few ultra-wealthy extremists who want to codify and impose their personal religious beliefs on all of us via binding law.
In April and May of this year, Arizonans and Floridians saw their reproductive rights limited by decisions handed down by their respective state supreme courts, but that isn’t the end of the story. Democrats in Arizona have since spearheaded legislation that Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-Arizona) signed to repeal the draconian 1864 near-total abortion ban their court deemed constitutional. And Floridians will likely decide in November on a ballot initiative that would guarantee them broader abortion access, counteracting their supreme court’s greenlighting of a near-total abortion ban.
Some state courts, like those in Arizona and Florida, have assailed our reproductive and other rights, but others have also played a crucial role in protecting our freedoms, like in Pennsylvania, Montana, Kansas, and elsewhere. The new key role of state courts in determining the state of reproductive justice for its citizens post-Roe has made these institutions an even larger target for regressive forces seeking to roll back our freedoms.
A new report by True North Research demonstrates that some of the key national actors who helped hand-pick and back the nominations of the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court — who are likewise tied to groups litigating court cases to turn back our rights — have also sought to capture state courts to further advance their regressive agenda.
Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society and the Florida Supreme Court
Right-wing attorney Leonard Leo is the central figure in the long-term campaign to capture the federal and state judiciaries and to install people on the bench who oppose reproductive freedom and corporate regulation. Leo co-chairs the board of the Federalist Society, a group created over 40 years ago with the help of then-professor Antonin Scalia and others to create pathways to power for “conservative and libertarian” lawyers. For years, Leo was the executive vice president of the Federalist Society.

In 2019, The Washington Post detailed how Leo’s network raised more than $250 million to capture the U.S. Supreme Court and change the law, a figure that True North tallied as nearly $600 million from 2014-2021. It later became public that, in 2020, Leo received the largest known political advocacy donation in history when right-wing billionaire Barre Seid transferred $1.6 billion to the “Marble Freedom Trust.”
[State courts] have come even more into the crosshairs of a few ultra-wealthy extremists who want to codify and impose their personal religious beliefs on all of us via binding law.
Leo’s role as Trump’s judge-picker is well documented and known by the public. However, lesser known is Leo’s long-standing effort to derail merit selection at the state level and control who sits on various states’ highest courts, as covered in True North’s new report.
Florida is no different. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed five of the state Supreme Court’s seven sitting justices and Leo has played an outsized personal role advising DeSantis on his judicial appointees, just as Leo hand-selected for former President Donald Trump three of the sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices who comprise part of the court’s far right majority. (Leo also helped install the other two.) A 2019 review by People’s Parity Project State Courts Manager Billy Corriher found that Florida was one of eight states with a Supreme Court dominated by justices with close ties to the Federalist Society.
Groups that have close Leo ties were also amicus filers or represented amicus filers in the Florida abortion case, such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and its 501(c)(3) Charlotte Lozier Institute; Concerned Women for America; Holtzman Vogel (representing American Cornerstone Institute); and First Liberty Institute (representing National Institute of Family and Life.)
The groundwork laid for DeSantis to remake the Florida Supreme Court began in 2001, when Gov. Jeb Bush, a Federalist Society contributor who has publicly defended Leo, signed into law legislation that gave the governor more control over the state’s judicial nominating commission, diminishing the power of the state bar over the court’s composition. While a push to fully eliminate merit selection failed, “the result [was] that Florida’s judicial selection process has shifted away from the collaborative [state bar]-governor process, which has been the hallmark of merit selection, to a system closer to a gubernatorial appointment process,” according to a 2006 research article in The Justice System Journal. Before 2001, the Florida Bar Association (FBA) appointed three lawyers to every nine-member Judicial Nominating Commission (JNC), of which there were 26 in the state (one for each circuit and district court of appeal and the state supreme court). The governor appointed three of the other JNC commissioners (lawyers or non-lawyers), and the six commissioners jointly selected by the governor and the FBA chose the other three commissioners. For vacancies on the Florida Supreme Court and the five district courts of appeal, as well as interim vacancies on state trial courts, the JNC would then vet applicants and create a slate of three to six candidates for the governor to select from to fill the vacancy.
The Justice System Journal study also explained that the post-2001 selection process skewed far to the right-wing, “as perhaps intended.” Zero judges chosen by the Judicial Nominating Commission reported Federalist Society membership right before the shift, and eight self-reported Federalist Society membership, in addition to membership in other far right religious groups, by January 2004.
Leonard Leo’s Long-Standing Effort to Capture State Courts
Leo’s influence over the Supreme Court in Florida and other states is the fruit of a long-standing effort by Leo and the Federalist Society, part of which has been assailing merit selection of judges, in order to install far right judges in key state-level positions of power.
Anti-abortion billionaire Dick Uihlein, who inherited the Schlitz brewing fortune, waded deep into the effort to capture state courts with the 2022 launch of his own state-focused super PAC, Fair Courts America.
In the 1990s, Leo’s work at the Federalist Society included efforts to undermine the American Bar Association (ABA), a legal group full of corporate lawyers that assesses the quality of judicial candidates based on their professional qualifications. In early 2001, Leo and the Federalist Society succeeded in getting George W. Bush to bounce the ABA from evaluating federal judicial candidates before nomination, at the same time as the Federalist Society was beginning to play an informal but powerful role in screening potential nominees.
Within weeks Leo and the Federalist Society also began to focus on assailing how justices on state Supreme Courts were chosen. In March 2001, the Federalist Society co-sponsored a forum on judicial selection to attack merit selection of judges titled “Picking State Judges: Who and How?” Of course, now we know the answer to the questions he posed: Who? By Leo. How? With the dark money resources he would later accumulate through the access provided by his post at the Federalist Society.
From this work Leo began to heavily target the “Missouri Plan,” the signature merit selection system for judges that was adopted by more than 30 states to protect the judicial selection process from undue and rank partisanship, where candidates for the state’s highest court are vetted by an independent judicial nominating commission, which then sends the governor a slate of well-qualified potential appointees to pick from. The Federalist Society would subsequently create a “Judicial Elections White Paper Task Force,” which issued findings attacking merit selection and nonpartisan elections.
An illuminating example of the Federalist Society’s state court work is in Missouri itself. In 2007, Leo and his allies lobbied Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, pressuring him to “return the names” of the judicial candidates chosen by the merit selection committee who were two Democrats and a moderate Republican, as reported by ProPublica. After the governor held firm, Leo began backing a group dubbed “Better Courts for Missouri” led by a recent law-school graduate and former clerk for a Federalist Society judge (who was also cousin of right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh) named Jonathan Bunch. (Bunch is now president of Leo’s for-profit CRC Advisors and Leo’s potential successor at Marble Freedom Trust, which was funded by the Leo-tied Wellspring Committee and the former Judicial Crisis Network.) Bunch’s operation sought to replace the state’s three-person judicial selection commission with seven people selected by the governor and approved by the right-wing legislature.
Bunch also filed a ballot initiative petition to give the governor control of the judicial selection commission and supported other legislative changes, all of which failed. But Bunch was hired to work with Leo at the Federalist Society on state court reforms nationally. From 2008-2010, Bunch was director of state courts at the Federalist Society.
He was also later tapped by Leo to help direct some of Leo’s outside operations while they worked together at the Federalist Society, resulting in Bunch receiving substantial amounts of money. Ultimately, when Leo left the Federalist Society in 2020, Bunch went with him to CRC Advisors, a for-profit PR firm that has worked with Leo for years, including on his state court efforts.
CRC Advisors is now the beneficiary of millions in transfers of cash from nonprofit groups that Leo directs Marble money and other major funding to, which then turn around and hire CRC Advisors. This has led to complaints and an investigation, although Leo, through spokesmen, has stated that he has done no wrong.
While right-wing special interests, many tied to Leo, continue to assail merit selection in states like Kansas and Oklahoma, big money also continues to play an increasingly large role in states that elect judges.
Who Are the Other Bad Actors Trying to Capture State Courts in 2024?
In 2024, the U.S. is likely to see some of the most expensive state judicial elections in history. Right-wing special interests have their sights set on state court elections in states like Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina and Ohio, among others, where courts continue to be a political battleground and will have the final say over millions of Americans’ access to reproductive freedom, fair elections, fair maps, fair trials, and more.
One of the most prominent groups spending to influence state judicial elections is the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which deploys ads in state court races via its “Judicial Fairness Initiative.” The Initiative’s sole funder is RSLC. Leo does not work for RSLC, but his Concord Fund (formerly the Judicial Crisis Network) has been one of the largest funders of RSLC in recent years, contributing more than $10 million since 2014. The group has frequently deployed a “million-dollar cash bomb” tactic, running a last-minute, scorched-earth style campaign in state judicial races against judges who often cannot raise enough money, or have enough time to counter such last-minute attacks designed to aid the Initiative’s preferred candidates.
Beyond Leo, billionaires Dick Uihlein, Charles Koch and Jeff Yass will likely continue to heavily target these state judicial seats in order to impose their personal agendas as binding law, as they have in past elections.
Anti-abortion billionaire Dick Uihlein, who inherited the Schlitz brewing fortune, waded deep into the effort to capture state courts with the 2022 launch of his own state-focused super PAC, Fair Courts America (FCA). According to True North’s report, FCA has raised more than $10 million from Uihlein and his Restoration PAC. It used this war chest to influence a myriad of state court races and also to attack progressive prosecutors in Florida and other states. FCA spent heavily in the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Supreme Court races in 2023 (the FCA-backed candidates lost in both states). FCA has already spent over $600,000 earlier this year in the Alabama Supreme Court Republican primary backing failed challenger Bryan Taylor, who said that “embryos were human beings whose lives begin at fertilization” and thus entitled to the same rights as minor children.
True North’s report also details fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch’s active role in influencing state courts. In addition to funding RSLC and the Federalist Society, Koch’s Americans for Prosperity — the flagship group launched by Koch as part of his dizzying network of tax-exempt groups — has spent big to influence state supreme courts in Florida, as well as in Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
Leo, Koch, Yass, Uihlein, and the other regressive forces seeking to impose their personal religious beliefs as law know that our reproductive and other rights will now be won or lost in state courts, as they were in Florida. The public should too.
Lisa Graves, True North’s executive director, contributed to this story.

Seventy years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, school segregation persists throughout the country.

In May 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separating students based on their skin color violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and nullified the nineteenth century “separate but equal” tenet.  

Since its official end, the evidence for school segregation’s socioeconomic costs has mounted. Research shows that segregation widens the achievement gaps among students of color and harms their educational experience.

“Racial segregation is harmful,” a 2022 Stanford study noted, “because it concentrates minority students in high-poverty schools.”

Aiming to make the best out of this grim reality, national organizations and activists have advocated for building and sustaining community schools. For instance, in 2019, United Teachers Los Angeles compelled the city’s Unified School District to open thirty such schools, and Philadelphia partially pays for its twenty community schools through a beverage tax. 

Woven into the fabric of the community, these schools tend to reflect the local population, incorporate its culture, enable students to walk or ride their bikes to school, and make it easier for parents and legal guardians to get involved. 

As with the harms of segregation, the positive effects of community schools are backed up by research. Evidence shows community schools reduce absenteeism, mend behavior, and boost learning and graduation rates. 

Other benefits include providing “safe havens” for low-income kids, hosting after-school and weekend activities, helping school districts meet such needs as space for professional development, and doubling as youth centers.

Community schools “can operate as a hub,” noted the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, “not just of services, but of engagement, learning, and collaborative approaches that the entire community can take part in.”

I spent the 2008-09 school year filming daily activities in Duval Elementary, a community school on the economically disadvantaged east side of Gainesville, Florida. I had heard of the school’s academic success, and I wanted to document its story.  

In 2003, Duval went from a grade of F to an A on its average high-stakes state-standardized test scores. And it maintained its academic excellence through 2008. When I walked in the door for the first time, I felt shocked to see that while the faculty and administration were racially diverse and middle-class, the students were 99 percent Black.

As a community school, Duval served as a lifeline to its students, 95 percent of whom qualified for universal free meals. For a large proportion of them, getting consistent nourishment meant having to go to the school cafeteria on weekends and holidays, as well. 

Duval kept its doors open to the students’ parents and legal guardians, too. Math and reading teacher Gloria Jean Merriex—the protagonist of my documentary, Class of Her Own, offered Saturday test-prep sleepovers to third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders, as well as evening classes to adults. 

“She invited any parent who wanted to come in and check on their kid or what not,” Anthony Guice, father of one of Merriex’s former students, says in the documentary. 

Living and working in the community enabled Merriex to forge a two-way connection with parents. 

“She sometimes used to go by their house, especially a lot of kids that are really going through a lot,” says Guice, who showed up at Merriex’s classroom nearly every day after his nightshift, initially to sharpen his math skills and ultimately to help her manage class sizes of up to fifty students.

Merriex reinvented instructions for vulnerable children and played a crucial role in the school’s state standardized test success. It was the community school structure that empowered her to rewrite the curriculum to meet her students where they were, practice tough love, and infuse her lessons with hip-hop, dance, and church-choir-like chanting. 

Her innovations paid long-term dividends to her students, many of whom went on to college and professional careers. They also contributed to Duval’s unprecedented success, which brought in a great deal of additional funding. In 2005, the school became an arts academy. It stood as a beacon of light and a source of pride for an underserved community.

But that proved short-lived. In 2008, Merriex died of a diabetic stroke at the age of fifty-eight. In 2009, Duval failed the state standardized test. In 2015, it shut down. 

East side residents have told me that Duval’s closing has left a gaping hole in the community. 

A recent proposal to the School Board of Alachua County calls for transforming the former Duval building into a cultural youth center.

The lesson for our educational system is clear: While continuing to strive for school desegregation, support community schools. They may provide one of our best opportunities for education equity.

Lily Greenberg Call said her Jewish background is what compels her to take a stand against the administration.

On Wednesday, an Interior Department Joe Biden appointee became the first Jewish political appointee to resign over the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, levying sharp criticisms of the administration she says is instrumentalizing Jewish identity in order to continue funding Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians.
Former special assistant to the Interior Department’s chief of staff Lily Greenberg Call wrote in a letter that she can no longer “continue to represent this administration amidst President Biden’s disastrous, continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” Including Call, at least five mid- to senior-level administrative staffers have resigned so far in protest of the U.S.’s involvement in Gaza.
Call said her Jewish background is what compels her to take a stand against the administration.
“My whole life has been spent in Jewish community in the U.S. and Israel,” Call wrote. “People in my community lost loved ones during Hamas’s attack on October 7th; beloveds killed, displaced, and taken as hostages. I am terrified by rising antisemitism around the world. And yet I am certain that the answer to this is not to collectively punish millions of innocent Palestinians through displacement, famine, and ethnic cleansing.”
“Israel’s ongoing offensive against Palestinians does not keep Jewish people safe — in Israel nor in the United States,” Call continued. “What I have learned from my Jewish tradition is that every life is precious. That we are obligated to stand up for those facing violence and oppression, and to question authority in the face of injustice.”

Call chose May 15 to resign in recognition of Nakba Day, the anniversary of Zionist forces violently pushing 750,000 Palestinians out of historic Palestine 76 years ago in order for settlers to establish the state of Israel. Palestinians have long argued that the Nakba, translated roughly to “catastrophe,” started earlier than 1948 and is still very much ongoing.
Shortly after she posted her resignation letter on X, Call’s account was banned. It now appears to be up again, but in a restricted manner.
Call said that Israel has committed numerous violations of international law in Gaza that were only possible because of the U.S.’s ongoing military support of Israel. Biden could end the genocide now, she noted, but has used “nearly no leverage” against Israel, opting instead to legitimize the slaughter.
In interviews about her resignation, Call added that she has been particularly disturbed by Biden’s remarks that Israel is the only thing keeping Jewish people safe across the world and that Palestinian fighters have an “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people,” a remark that many have noted is virulently anti-Palestinian.
“He is making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong,” Call told The Associated Press.
Call’s resignation is also notable due to her previous affiliation with the U.S.’s most prolific pro-Israel lobbying group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In 2019, Call graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was the president of AIPAC affiliate group Bears for Israel, and she says she attended many AIPAC-sponsored school events growing up.
But she has since chosen to separate herself from AIPAC, writing in an op-ed for Teen Vogue in 2022 that the group only “contributes to the cycle of violence by demanding or benefiting from unconditional support for the Israeli government no matter the cost.”
“We must understand that Palestinian and Jewish safety are not mutually exclusive, but are in fact intertwined,” she wrote.

The California State University system cited “insubordination” as the reason for the harsh punishment.

Leaders of the California State University (CSU) system placed Sonoma State University President Mike Lee on administrative leave over supposed “insubordination” after Lee made his university the first in the country to agree to an academic boycott of Israel and said he would give students input on divesting from Israel following student protests.
In a statement on Wednesday, CSU Chancellor Mildred García cited “insubordination” and unspecified “consequences” that Lee’s decision brought on the system. “Sonoma State University President Mike Lee sent a campuswide message concerning an agreement with campus protesters. That message was sent without the appropriate approvals,” García said.
On Tuesday, 18 days into their Gaza solidarity encampment at Sonoma State, pro-Palestine student protesters scored a win when Lee sent students a letter saying that he would be meeting some of the encampment protest’s demands.
One of his major concessions was a pledge that Sonoma State would boycott Israeli academic and research institutions, making it the first university in the U.S. to make such a promise amid current protests. The university does not currently have faculty or student exchange agreements with Israel, and the letter vowed that Sonoma State would not pursue such programs in the future, nor would it engage in any other collaborations with Israeli institutions.
Further, Lee agreed to form a student committee involving the campus branch of Students for Justice in Palestine that would take part in a “review” of investments that could involve Israel and then meet with proper officials to determine a course of action — a step that still falls far from a pledge to divest. He also agreed to introduce more curriculum on Palestinian culture and history, and released a statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza “so that a process for permanent, peaceful resolution can be established.”

CSU’s swift suspension of Lee is one of the harshest punishments handed out to a university administrator for agreeing to pro-Palestine students’ demands.
Lee sent a follow up message on Wednesday that echoed some of the language used in García’s statement. “In my attempt to find agreement with one group of students, I marginalized other members of our student population and community,” Lee said. “I realize the harm that this has caused, and I take full ownership of it. I deeply regret the unintended consequences of my actions.”
The punishment is the latest chilling action that institutions have taken against their own employees and students who show anything but deference to Israel, showing that even those in positions of some power are not immune from crackdowns on pro-Palestine sentiment. In recent weeks, universities across the country have employed extreme police brutality to subjugate student protesters, suspending many students speaking out against Israel’s genocide and having nearly 3,000 students arrested.

“The US is failing mothers,” the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health said in a new report.

A recent report from the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health reveals that almost every state in the nation is falling short in addressing the mental health needs of new and expecting mothers. According to the report, only four states — California, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington — have managed to exceed a C+ rating.
“The U.S. is failing mothers – only scoring a D+ grade,” the organization said in the report, noting that 29 states received D’s and F’s.
According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), approximately 20 percent of pregnant or postpartum women in the U.S. will experience a mental health condition such as depression, anxiety, or thoughts of suicide. Although hormonal changes during pregnancy and the postpartum period can trigger mood disorders, maternal mental health conditions cannot solely be attributed to neurochemical causes. Research shows that such mental health conditions disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities, and that factors such as racism and low socioeconomic status can heighten the risk and severity of these conditions.
“Black women not only face a higher chance of developing perinatal mood disorders than white women, but they are also less likely to receive treatment due to factors such as fear of stigma, involvement of child welfare services and financial barriers,” a factsheet on Black maternal mental health by the Black Mama’s Matter Alliance says. “Additionally, Black women experience stress and health disadvantages because of the interaction and multiplicative effects of racism, gender, class, and age.”
The report, which evaluated states on providers and programs, screening and screening reimbursement, and insurance coverage and treatment, found that the majority of states failed to support the mental health needs of new or expecting mothers. While the overall national grade did go from a D in 2023 to a D+ in 2024, Caitlin Murphy, a researcher who helped create the report cards, told The Hill that “[G]rades are still dismally low. … States should be commended for their hard work to address maternal mental health disparities, and we still have a long way to go.”

Suicide and drug overdoses are the leading causes of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S., with mental health and substance use-related deaths accounting for more than 22 percent of pregnancy-related fatalities.
“Maternal suicide is a tragedy that has rippling societal consequences as well as a lasting impact on families and communities,” an issue brief by the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health says. “As new and emerging data continues to affirm maternal suicide as a leading cause of maternal death, the recent momentum and interest surrounding maternal suicide must be leveraged into clinical, systems, and policy shifts that propel actionable change and prevent maternal suicides.”
On Tuesday, the Biden administration released a national strategy to address this “urgent public health crisis,” which includes constructing a national infrastructure that prioritizes perinatal mental health and ensuring that care and services are accessible.
“Many of these tragic deaths can be prevented by eliminating health disparities and understanding the impact of mental health during pregnancy and in the first months as a parent,” said Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. “We want to address the challenges people are facing, decrease stigma associated with these challenges, and improve access to support both inside and outside of the health care system.”

This year’s abortion bans in Florida and Arizona — following an older near-total prohibition in Texas — threaten to make the procedure virtually unattainable for undocumented people living in those states.
Texas outlawed abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in 2021, and banned the procedure almost entirely after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. Florida’s six-week ban, which outlaws the procedure before many people discover their pregnancies, took effect May 1.
Things in Arizona are less clear cut. In April, the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total ban from 1864. Although the court has paused enforcement of the ruling pending a Supreme Court challenge, and the legislature recently repealed the law, it may still temporarily take effect in late September since the repeal will not have any legal force until 90 days after the legislature adjourns for the year. Until then, abortion in Arizona is outlawed after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
People in these three states seeking abortions after the legal cutoffs have few options: traveling to a state where the procedure is legal, finding an out-of-state service to mail them abortion pills — which is medically safe but legally tenuous — or finding community-based networks that would do the same. But pursuing these avenues is substantially more difficult for undocumented people. In most states, limits on what kind of government identification they can carry means they cannot have driver’s licenses. (Today, that option is only available in 18 states and Washington DC.) This can make it far more difficult to leave a state for care.
Travel can also create legal and immigration risks for undocumented people. Florida and Texas recently passed laws specifically banning transporting undocumented people into those states. The Texas law, which is currently blocked in court, would allow police to arrest people they thought had illegally entered the state, and pending legislation in Arizona would do the same if enacted. (That bill is likely to be vetoed by the state’s Democratic governor.)

An alternative to travel — ordering abortion pills online — could be seen as a violation of laws in all three states that prohibit the provision of abortion through telemedicine.
Even heated public rhetoric can create a culture of fear that discourages people from seeking health care, including abortions. “We’re looking at a system where already immigrants face huge barriers toward accessing health care — higher uninsured rates, less connection to the health care system overall — compounded by immigration-related fears,” said Samantha Artiga, director of racial equity and health policy at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization. “It compounds the challenges significantly when accessing services is going to require additional steps, be it traveling out-of-state, be it figuring out how to use telehealth services.”
There is no reliable data about how many undocumented people seek abortions, nor how many have been denied care because of their states’ bans. Texas and Florida are home to more than a million undocumented people between the two of them; only California has a larger undocumented population. In both Texas and Florida, about 5 percent of women ages 15 through 44 — what’s commonly considered “reproductive age” — are undocumented, according to data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. In Arizona, about 4 percent are.
In all three of those states, the vast majority of undocumented people are Latinx. (In general, abortion bans disproportionately affect Latinx Americans, including citizens and permanent residents.) According to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, about half report speaking English “not well” or “not at all,” which can make it incredibly difficult to navigate out-of-state travel or varying states’ abortion laws, because information is often only available in English.
It’s already hard for undocumented people living in Florida to access local clinics without driver’s licenses. It will be even harder for them to cross state lines if they can’t speak English, said Dr. Chelsea Daniels, an ob-gyn who works at multiple Florida-based Planned Parenthood affiliates, and who has cared for undocumented patients.
“The privilege that comes with having a driver’s license or passport can’t be overstated,” Daniels said.
The confluence of abortion and immigration laws has created “an absolute state of fear,” said Ray Serrano, director of research and policy at the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, deterring some from seeking care at all.
At a Woman’s Choice in Jacksonville, even before the state’s six-week abortion ban took effect, employees had been forced to refer a handful of undocumented patients out of state for care: those who weren’t able to get an abortion before the 15-week cutoff that was in effect prior to May 1. Now, with the six-week ban in effect and more Floridians leaving the state for pregnancy-related procedures, they anticipate the share will grow.
Undocumented patients have relied on a handful of groups for help with travel: some organizations offer volunteer drivers, and another called Elevated Access works with non-commercial pilots who fly people to other states. But coordinating that kind of travel is difficult and takes time, pushing patients further into pregnancy.
“It’s one of those things that would come into play that would — I don’t want to say 100 percent restrict their access, but would cause their access to be delayed even further,” said Gabby Long, the hotline director at A Woman’s Choice.
The logistics of this kind of travel are complex, said Serra Sippel, interim executive director of the Brigid Alliance, which provides practical support to people who need to travel for abortions, particularly people later than 15 weeks into pregnancy.
If someone cannot legally drive, her organization has provided extra funding for a companion who can take over driving responsibilities. In other cases, they’ve purchased bus tickets for clients, asking local abortion funds to make sure that the route does not include any immigration checkpoints. A bus ride from Miami to Virginia — the closest state where abortion remains mostly legal and does not require a multi-day waiting period — can take about 23 hours, or about 8 hours longer than driving a car.
But with the new bans in effect — particularly in Florida, where 84,000 abortions were performed last year — the burden on these support groups will intensify, straining their ability to coordinate travel at such a specific level.
“The efforts to help people have been helping them on a case-by-case basis,” said Usha Ranji, associate director for women’s health policy at KFF. “Whether they are scalable and sustainable — that seems really difficult, and I think we know that they don’t reach everybody who is in need.”

Critics lambasted the governor for enacting policies that are “not acting in the best interests of Floridians.”

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Wednesday that will weaken climate regulations and expand fossil fuel use in the state, even as Floridians experience the increasingly devastating effects of global warming.
Although Florida Republicans passed several regulations in 2008 to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis, they have since dismantled those regulations piece by piece.
The legislation signed by DeSantis this week expands the use of natural gas, limits regulations on gas-based appliances, and reduces regulations on gas pipelines in the state. It also eliminates requirements for government agencies to hold meetings in hotels across the state to discuss the effects of the climate crisis, and ends requirements that those agencies consider climate-friendly products when making necessary purchases, like fuel-efficient vehicles.
The legislation goes into effect on July 1. While it will not affect the growth of solar power in Florida, it does limit other renewable energy sources in the state, including the “construction, operation, or expansion of certain wind energy facilities & wind turbines.”
The new law was widely condemned by climate advocates.

“This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry,” Yoca Arditi-Rocha, executive director of the nonprofit CLEO Institute, told NBC News.
Indeed, during DeSantis’s short-lived presidential campaign this past year, he was one of the top recipients of oil and gas money on a list that includes both elected officials and presidential candidates.
In a post on X shortly after he signed the legislation, DeSantis claimed he was“restoring sanity” and “rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.” The move comes as Florida is increasingly seeing the effects of the climate crisis firsthand, including deadly and higher-intensity hurricanes, extreme heat that is breaking global records, and worsening toxic algae blooms.
If left unaddressed, the effects of the climate crisis in the Sunshine State are only going to get worse. Sea levels are predicted to rise between 1-4 feet in the next century. Flooding and hurricanes will likely become even more destructive, with higher windspeeds resulting in greater casualties and property damage. Meanwhile, higher temperatures will reduce the yields of a number of important crops for the state and take a toll on people’s health, particularly vulnerable populations like children and the elderly.